Saturday, January 21, 2017

Between Lives - Nilofar Shidmehr (Oolichan Books)

Women are marching all over the world today and Today's book of poetry salutes each and every one of them.

Nilofar Shidmehr is an Iranian-Canadian poet with a considerable voice to add to the choir.

Between Lives a second book of poetry from Nilofar Shidmehr could find purchase on any number of different poetry shelves. This book could easily be considered a book of feminist poetry and thoroughly at home in Women's Studies, just as easily Between Lives could be on a Diaspora Poets shelf.

Nilofar Shidmehr seems fearless when she reveals the true life of women in the Iran of her youth. Shidmehr's poems are heavy with a flaming authenticity, crystal clear in focus and heartbreaking when you feel the crippling burden of gender.

Alive

Under the knife blade

my mother's broken hand in a sling,

purple peels fall

over the face of the counter.

Her swollen cheek is marked

by a bruise, the shape of an eggplant,.

She tilts over to check if the meat

is soft. The oil leaps up, scalds.

She pulls back, leans on a crutch hidden

under the torn wing of her white chador.

I see the scratches on her neck

as she turns her head. The wooden spatula

slips from her fingers onto the floor.

She bends to pick it up, but I reach out first,

snap up the spatula, flinging it into the basin.

Do you know who are you cooking for?

I yell at my mother, shoving her aside,

taking her place at the stove.

He loves his Baademjaan, deep-fried,

she whispers, with tears in her charcoal eyes.

The stew simmers slowly.

But I turn my head away and hold

onto the image from the week past

swirling around, again, in my head --

Feet tangled in the hem of her chador;

my father, leaning over the banister,

slips his hands back in his pockets,

watching as she rolls down the stairs, still alive.

...

Shidmehr brings us moments of gentle humour, uninhibited passion and matrimonial bliss as well as some of the other kind. But in Between Lives the real focus is elsewhere. Between Lives opens up the tribulations of giving up your culture, your home, your past, the place of your birth and jumping into an entirely different life in another land. We are reminded that the cultural shock and toll is only a small part of the immigrant/refugee story. Most of us will never experience that sort of isolation, that split from family, history and those left behind.

Make no mistake, Today's book of poetry was blown away time and time again by the candor in Nilofar Shidmehr's remarkable poems. Shidmehr reveals more than we expect and to marvelous effect, she goes beyond lifting the veil, we get a look beyond the proverbial chador and right into the mind's eye of a woman facing enormous struggles who is both observant and outraged.

Racing Back to the Time When My Daughter Was Born

I am at the gym on Life Fitness,

my daughter's arrival from Iran

only six days away --

my girl who arrived

in this world twenty-three years ago.

When I start exercising, my heart

rate is at 100: the same as

a hundred-year-old's

working to her maximum capacity.

On the chart, I look at the rate

for young hearts like my Saaghar's: 160.

And then I think about my own heart,

about how it's going to race

the moment when Saaghar will emerge

from Customs -- dragging a bag

and looking for the woman

from who she had emerged --

an umbilical cord dragging

behind her -- a cord

that had to be cut

for her life to go on.

I continue to go on running

on Life Fitness and my heart beat

picks up, echoing in my mind

hers from more than two decades ago,

coming through the stethoscope at my gynecologist's:

it sounded as if I had a horse inside me,

galloping full force ahead in my veins,

the rhythm of her hooves ringing

in the curves of my skin.

That sound sewed me to Saaghar,

despite an unwanted pregnancy

because of a slight displacement

of the diaphragm my gynecologist had placed

one day after our wedding -- the same trusted woman

gynecologists who had also confirmed

the existence of a hymen without which

there could be no marriage.

Another doctor, however,

Mr. Aaryaanpour, had arrived at the delivery room

after ten hours of excruciating pain,

because he had decided to ignore

nine phone calls from the head-midwife, begging him

to leave the gambling party he was at

and immediately attend to his patient

whose cervix was not opening enough

for the baby to come out.

He was the one who cut me open

and delivered that beating heart inside me,

who then transformed to a bruised

black-haired baby.

My husband had forced me to change

that once-trusted-woman-gynecologist

in the seventh month, because she had suggested a C-section,

and gave her professional opinion

that I was not a good candidate for natural delivery.

My sister-in-law, Ashraf, had insisted

that a woman who did not experience pain

at childbirth could not be a good mother.

Her words became the seeds

of a small dispute which grew

larger every day and after nine months

was delivered in the shape of a premature divorce.

Ashraf then said that a bad mother

is not entitled to the custody

of her brother's child and had to, without delay,

be separated from the newborn.

From my husband's mouth, her words

were thrown at me like stones.

The blows were so severe that I cannot

even remember how with my remaining

strength, I managed to pull myself out from that hold

of pain and escape, so today, on February 13, 2013,

more than twenty years later,

I am in Vancouver on Life Fitness

running again with all my strength

to get me heart beat closer

to my daughter's: to 160.

The chart on the machine informs me

that the more people age, the more

their heart rate and the age match up:

this is good news for me, I'd imagine,

my daughter's heart and mine

perhaps are closer now compared

to the time she was yet undelivered--

at that time no matter how much my heart

beat fast, it could not even get close

to the dust rising from the hooves

of that horse that I imagined

was inside me, galloping forward.

But now that there is a hope, an opportunity,

an opening, I smile at my pulsating

image in the glass;

now that her heart has slowed down

and mine is speeding up;

now that she is about to arrive

at the place where I live.

Still I have to run faster

our hearts are twenty points apart --

I have to run faster

even though I have raced

for many years to meet

the moment when she will arrive

again, like a newborn, in my arms.

...

This morning's read was another spirited adventure. I had called our researcher Otis into the office this morning to translate the few lines of Farsi in Shidmehr's text. It's good to have a cat like Otis on staff, he speaks Farsi, Italian, Russian, at least one kind of Chinese but I can't remember if it is Mandarin or Cantonese, French and so on. Otis informed me this morning that he was heading to Sicily for a couple of months and he was doing it Wednesday. Today's book of poetry will be sad to see him go and jealous for his adventure.

More importantly Otis was able to impart some context on Iran and knowing what Otis knows it was reassuring when he sized up his reading of Between Lives and declared that Shidmehr was not only the real deal in every way but a very brave real deal. Today's book of poetry had no doubts but it is always nice to get things confirmed by a pro.

This Drunken Russian Man Intends on Peeing,

opens his fly,

bravely and pulls

his small change out

as if yanking something as precious

as an American Dollar.

Facing a wall as high as Tsarist Russia

before Communism, he releases himself,

humming an old heroic song,

while fissures on the wall,

now fresh and satiated, sing along

to a melody that scores

the sudden collapse of the Tsardom.

Shaken, I stand there too,

as I eye the man,

and wish I could be like him--

fly foolish

before everything falls apart,

singing along,

with, I, too, could display

my crack so openly.

...

Today's book of poetry marvelled at how Shidmehr was able to handle the difficult elephants in her complicated life with such charm and aplomb. Shidmehr, as a woman, as a feminist or as an immigrant, does not need the approval of men like me. But men like me sure hope the rest of you get a chance to read Between Lives. Dignity comes at a mighty stiff price for some people. Nilofar Shidmehr has turned hers into poetry that is smart and confident, she has turned it into hope.

Nilofar Shidmehr

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nilofar Shidmehr is an Iranian-Canadian poet, writer and a scholar of arts-based qualitative research focused on poetic inquiry. Her first book of poetry in English Shirin and Salt Man was nominated for a BC Book Prize in 2009 and her first book of poetry in Farsi Two Nilofars: Before and After Migration has received worldwide recognition among the expatriate Iranian community. Nilofar is a cultural and educational activist and a part of the Iranian women’s movement.

Nilofar earned a PhD in education and an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. Her next scholarly project is to investigate how the lyrical and performative modes of inquiry can be included in discourse analysis, literary criticism, and critical reading and writing practices to integrate and advance literacy. Her next creative project is to write a collection of short stories about the lives of Iranians in Iran and Canada. She lives in Yaletown with her husband.

BLURBS

"The voice of Nilofar Shidmehr's poetry moves restlessly between two imagined lives: one, a life rooted in the past and in Iran, a life of strict gendered expectations but also of continuity and familiarity; the other, a life in Canada, relatively uncompromised by gender segregation, but yet still troubled by the pain of exile and others' prejudice. These poems speak plainly of mothers, of daughters, of lovers, but always beneath each simple story is the pulse of an intelligent, sensuous desire. These poems are feminist, moist, fragrant! Each word bursts, ripe in the mouth, like pomegranate."
- Sonnet L'Abbé (Canadian Poet and Critic, Winner of Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award, 2000)

"In this stirring collection Between Lives, Shidmehr's direct voice and unflinching gaze put her among such great activist poets as Martin Espada, Dionne Brand, and Pablo Neruda. With a clear gaze and arresting imagery. Shidmeher brings to light the violence and injustice of women's lives in Iran and in the diaspora. Fully wrought and deeply personal, this is a necessary book by an accomplished writer.
~Elizabeth Bachinsky, nominee for Governor General's Award for English-language poetry

"These poems are the untold stories of contemporary Persian women's lives, lives portrayed with intimacy and lyricism, despite their subjugation. These are poetics meditations that only a poet simultaneously intimate with a place, and exiled from it, can offer. In this book, men and women are like 'fire and cotton,' and must be kept apart; they are 'flammable with the slightest spark.' Nilofer Shidmehr's poems burn with a fierce, haunting fire.

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